the earliest was when i was in 2nd grade... it was my own cousins... they were a few years older (still are, go figure)... they asked me if there was a girl at school who i liked, i said yeah... they asked what her name was, i said Alisha... they said, is she Black?, i thought about it and said "yeah.".... they started laughing real hard, i didn't know what to think... Alisha was actually Japanese, but i didn't really know what black and white meant (they don't mean anything outside the discourse of racism)... i just knew that there were people lighter than Alisha who were called Black.

Thinking about it now, I can't effin believe my cousins. Bunch of brown-skinned Puerto Ricans with no concept of how white they're not.

The next one that sticks out was on the school bus, i was in 4th grade sitting with my friend Brian who's Mexican-American. A Black kid was sitting in front of us and Brian called him a nigger. The kid turned around, kind of confused, Brian said "a nigger with a trigger"... something we were used to hearing NWA rap about... looking back at it now, i could have gone apeshit, but I just said "Don't say that." and the Black kid said "Yeah, beaner."...

fast-forward to 8th grade, we're split up in groups in class and a "white" kid named Doug decides to tell a joke, i'm like OK. it goes like this: (oh yeah, did i mention by this time i "looked white"... strange when you're "mixed" you look different "races" at different ages) OK here's the joke:
Mike is walking by with his gun and it's a really big powerful gun, right? so his friend sees him and says, "Hey Mike, what are you doin with that gun?" Mike says "Oh, i'm just going to shoot some cans" So his friend says, "Cans? That's a awful big gun for shooting cans." So Mike says "Yeah, well I'm shooting Mexi-cans, Afri-cans, Puerto Ri-cans,..." ha ha ha, right? I wasn't prepared for that and the teacher called for the class's attention right then... I was crazy confused tho'

Back to my cousin J...
This has hit me harder than anything else cuz it's my effin COUSIN... fast-forward to last November, i'm 21 he's 22, we're drinking together in a bar, haven't seen the kid in like 4 years. A Black man walks into the bar which is full but only with "whites", Mexicans, and us... J turns to me and says, "Look at that dude. I wouldn't want to be a nigger if a fight broke out in here." No comment. I'm thinkin man, this is my cousin, wtf? He's darker than me, and he grew up in Oakland, wtf is he talking about? So I thought of something to say, not trying to act as offended as I was. "Look at you. Look at me. We're Puerto Rican, we got Black in us, too. Look at Pop." (Pop is what we call our grandfather) He says "Doesn't matter. I could be Black as midnight, I still wouldn't be no nigger." Then he starts to lecture me: "Do you know what the difference is between a Black person and a nigger? A black person is just a black person. A nigger is someone who's trying to take your shit... someone who is trying to take what's yours." (has he been taking all that Too Short the wrong way? i don't know.) So I ask him "How come you only said that word when he walked in?" He says "I was just saying... wouldn't want to be no nigger if a fight broke out." He went on to tell me about how he used to roll with a bunch of "white boys with shaved heads" and go to Raiders games and yell "nigger" at people with 49ers clothes on. I lost him in the crowd and walked home myself. I saw him the next day, he had a fat Black eye (ironic?). I don't know what to do about this kid.





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